Back to the Thousand Sons..

I finally got my 3rd squad of Thousand Sons painted, my army now will be completely made of fearless units except for the sorcerer but as long as I keep him/her in a squad, they are fearless as well. I might trade out my possessed for termies but like I stated in an earlier post, I just love these guys. When GW released these models, I knew that I wanted to have at least a squad of them. Once the chaos codex dropped however and with it sub par rules to go along with the possessed, most people I know decided against them. I don't care, I keep using them as I just love the look of the models; besides, roll a 6 on the daemonkin chart and you might have a unit that could potentially take on any unit in the game. Combine them with an icon of slaannesh or Khorne and even if you roll something other then the dreaded 1, they can still put out a lot of damage.

If I drop the possessed, I could do a termie squad and replace an oblit for a vindicator which would provide me with another threat, a threat that just causes opponents to just concentrate on the vindi; it makes a pretty cheap bullet magnet, well cheap for the Chaos dex anyways. This last Saturday I tried my new army and it performed pretty good.

My thousand sons even though one squad was charged by a squad of killer kans held them for 3 turns of the game until the game ended. Yes I couldn't do anything to them but the fact that they held the squad and didn't allow them to run amok on my team-mates imperial guard squads helped us last until the end of the game. Artimus's squad helped him slaughter a squad of 4 thunderwolves after getting charged by them. No matter how many power weapons or rending hits my opponent put on the squad, their 4 + invul made it so that I would get a save no matter what. That and having Artimus (count as Kharn)in the squad made charging the squad pretty dangerous.

I plan on building a Rhino for them as well in order to keep all of my troops mobile. My local FLGS plans on running another campaign for April but this time the points limit will be 1500pts instead of 1250 like the one in March. For this one, my Thousand Sons might make an appearance...

Nightlords Campaign, the final games -

For the last 2 games of the campaign, I pretty much kept the same idea for my army, namely to focus it on my Chosen squads as my "troops" with just scoring Rhinos and of course my bikes. My next game I drew a Tau player, one of 2 players that were in the campaign. Its funny that the Tau codex is seen as one of weaker codex's at the moment yet in the end it was an actual Tau player that won the campaign. My opponent wasn't the one who won it(too bad as I really wanted to play that guy), none the less he was a pretty good player who made just a couple of mistakes. I think I took him by surprise when I told him that most of my army would be infiltrating. I won the roll off as he had some kroot with him and I infiltrated a squad of chosen 13 inches away from his pathfinders and his commanders and the other 13 inches away from 2 piranhas. First turn came and I ended up taking out his 2 piranhas, his pathfinders, and a squad of firewarriors. By turn 3 I had managed to take out all of his suits except for his 1 broadside and was claiming 3 of the 5 objectives. By turn 4, it was all over when my bikes finally came in from reserve and all of his scoring units were either in combat, dead, or running off the table. My opponent was a gracious "loser" and though he did make a couple of major mistakes, I still think that my dice are what ultimately beat him as until turn 3 I only had my havoc squad and 2 chosen squads on the field as I kept the rest in reserve and just couldnt make any of my turn 2 reserve rolls. My guys just wouldn't die after getting shot and shot, I was just making all of my armor and cover saves.

My last game I played yet another blood angels player who was running Dante and another captain who was his campaign champion. This opponent was a great guy but truth be told in 1250 I wouldn't be running Dante nor a storm raven. I heard that he tried running a pure sanguinary guard list which means a very low model count. For our game he actually dropped 2 sanguinary guard squads and took 3 assault squads in Rhinos which added almost 15 models more to his army. I decided to take only 1 chosen squad and 2 full 10 man troop squads as I felt that I would be fighting for my life to claim my objectives. By turn 4 I took out all but 1 assault squad in shooting, my opponent just wasn't making his feel no pain rolls. MVP of this game was definitely Dante, probably the best I have ever seen this guy do in a game against me or any other game I watched, he single-handily took out my chosen squad, a rhino, and a 10 man troop squad. His Sang guard unit actually wiffed anytime they got into combat, lucky for him that Dante picked up the slack. Even with me killing all but 1 scoring unit, we tied. He was smart to put the 3 objective in our game on top of a ruin and I just couldn't get up there in time. Due to the tie, the game went to the 2nd winning condition which was kill points and I won 7 to 3. All in all, the record of the Nightlords in this campaign was extremely good with a 5-1 record.

MVP's for my army was definitely the big chosen squads and the auto cannon havocs with my bikes sorry to say doing nothing really spectacular except to look good when killing Rhinos. The raptors who was never going to be a focus actually won a place in my list by taking out campaign champions and just being a real menace in all of my games. In terms of placing, I was tied for 4th or 5th out of 22 players, not bad for using a Chaos Bike focused list. So our next event will be a 1750pts tourney to close the month of March. The TO has given us the rules, basically no campaign champs can compete and we are welcomed to use any army. Who knows, at 1750pts, the Thousand Sons can definitely come out to play.

Nightlords Campaign - The first games

With the campaign in full swing at my local GW, it was time to test out my list. The first opponent I drew was an imperial guard player. His list contained a Commissar lord as his campaign champion (HQ), veterans in chimera's with melta guns (2), 1 squad of penal legionaires, 2 scout walkers with missile launchers, a squad of snipers, and the heavy hitters, 2 leman battle tanks, a executioner and a normal Leman russ with Lascannon and Heavy bolter sponsons. My first game was going to be a very difficult one as I really only had melta guns to deal with armor 14 tanks. Lucky for me I rolled pretty high for my bonus points and was able to squeeze in a 7 man chosen squad with 2 melta guns.

The table we picked also helped me out a bit as it was full of city terrain, a heck of lot more then your typical 40K game which allowed me to infiltrate the Chosen squad with in 15 inches of his tanks and out of line of sight. I ended up barely winning the game and claiming his campaign champion which gave my champion plus 1+ attack. The MVP's of this game was definitely the chosen which assaulted his scout walkers and pretty much blocked the advance of his Leman Russes for most of the game. The unit that performed the worst was unfortunately my terminator squad. They came on way too late in the game (turn 5 as my reserve rolls were horrible) and though they contested my opponents objective for about a turn, were promptly shot to death by his penal legion and his executioner tank.

For my next series of games, I decided to change up the list and dropped the terminators. Instead since I had access to all 3 of my elite slots due to the rules, I decided to go with an all infiltrating army, basically to play up the Nightlords fluff of being a terror army, an army that utilizes the ambush. I dropped the terminators in favor of 2 full 10 man chosen squads, complete with an aspiring champ with powerfist and 2 melta guns. The plan moving forward was to infiltrate the squads and use them as my vanguard units with my scoring units only being 2 5 man squads in Rhinos. In my next 2 games these units performed just stellar, tying my next game against another imperial guard player (losing by the secondary condition of kill points) and wining against a blood angel player.

I ended up killing the blood angels campaign champion with my Raptor squad (a squad I got with bonus points)who got scout as a veteran ability due to taking down the blood angels champion. Now if Raptors had scout or infiltrate all the time, you would definitely see more of them run. In my next game against a Tau opponent these guys outflanked, took out the 15man Kroot squad screening some piranhas,helped take out 1 piranha, and killed 1 12 man firewarrior squad before getting gunned down. I lost the scouting ability as the squad was lost but they did prove to me that Raptors with the ability to outflank would be very awesome indeed.

Something to think about GW if you wanted to sell lots of Raptor models to Nightlords players when the new Chaos Dex comes out.. So far I'm 3 and 1 in this campaign, surprising to me considering the amount of "new" dex's people are using. But then again the guy winning the campaign so far is 5-0 and is playing Tau. Maybe there is something to the idea of people knowing their armies and how they will always trounce the Codex jumpers....